Israel

The Obama administration reportedly is fuming over Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to accept Speaker Boehner’s invitation to address Congress, which Netanyahu made without consulting the White House. The Israeli Prime Minister will “pay a price,” an administration official told an Israeli newspaper. Obama has perfected the art of ginning up grievances against Netanyahu and using them to seek concessions from Israel, as Netanyahu tries to smooth things over. I assume there’s »

John Boehner has invited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address the House of Rep, and Netanyahu has accepted. The White House, through press secretary Josh Earnest, responded by alleging a breach of protocol. Boehner denied the breach. He replied: The Congress can make this decision on its own. I don’t believe I’m poking anyone in the eye. There is a serious threat that exists in the world and the president, »

A week ago, Miss Israel, Doron Matalon, posted this nice photo of herself with Miss Lebanon, Miss Slovenia and Miss Japan on her very active Instagram account: Nothing happened immediately, but the picture began attracting negative attention in Lebanon, where some criticized Miss Lebanon, Saly Greige, for appearing in a photograph with an Israeli. That led Greige to disown the picture. She wrote on Facebook: To all my supporters and »

In furtherance of a completely different point, Foreign Policy performed a simple experiment: it used the search engine on the State Department’s web site to determine how often State has described any nation’s conduct as “unacceptable” since the onset of the Obama administration. The results were interesting and, I suppose, sadly predictable: using the State Department search engine, the top 10 countries for whom “unacceptable” was most often used in »

Paul wrote yesterday about the mendacity of the Israel BDS (“Boycott, Divest, Sanctions”) movement at Harvard, where the presence of a water dispenser made by an Israeli-based company in Harvard dining halls was called a “microaggression” by the permanently aggrieved. Late yesterday the widely noted psychologist Steven Pinker stepped up, writing to Harvard’s president Drew Faust and provost Alan Garber to protest in the strongest possible terms against capitulating to »

Increasingly, we hear the term “microaggression” tossed around by the infantile left. But what does it mean? As far as I can tell, a microaggression is an affront — real or imagined for the sake of being affronted — so trivial that few stable adults would notice it and none would give it a second thought. When the term is used, the only aggression in sight is that committed by »

The Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon moderated a panel at the Post’s diplomatic conference in Jerusalem on Thursday. On this panel Danish Ambassador Jesper Vahr expounded on the wisdom of the European Union’s application of a double standard to Israel. Senior contributing editor Caroline Glick angrily demurred. The Jerusalem Post covers it here. It’s an interesting exchange that warrants a look. UPDATE: Tom Wilson comments insightfully on this exchange at Commentary. »

Following up on the adjacent post, I want to note that Vice President Biden keynoted the Saban Forum conference in Washington this past Sunday afternoon. The Saban Forum is an annual event including American and Israeli leaders from across the political and social spectrum, organized by Haim Saban and the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. The White House has posted the text of Biden’s remarks here. »

As John has noted, the Obama administration is contemplating the imposition of sanctions on Israel as a response to new settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. So says Haaretz, a reliable Israeli source. When asked about this report, White House press secretary Josh Ernest did not deny it. Neither did the State Department’s spokesperson Marie Harf. At a minimum, then, President Obama wants Israel to believe that »

Russia is gobbling up much of Ukraine. China is putting growing pressure on its neighbors in East Asia. ISIS is chopping the heads off Americans. Syria’s government continues to slaughter thousands of its citizens. Iran is working feverishly on a bomb and running circles around our negotiators. Boko Haram is wreaking havoc in Nigeria. Hamas is raining rockets and missiles down on its neighbors. And the Obama administration reportedly is »

The deadline for reaching a deal with Iran over its nuclear program expires today without the parties having reached a negotiated agreement. The negotiating period will be extended until July 1 of next year. This development is being reported as “no deal,” but there actually is a deal of sorts here. According to the British foreign secretary, Iran will receive about $700 million per month in frozen assets. In exchange, »

As Scott noted earlier today, the Obama administration’s warm attitude toward Iran’s mullahs has been in the news. Its view of Israel, on the other hand, is much chillier. Last night, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave a talk in which he lauded Israel’s avoidance of civilian casualties during the recent Gaza conflict, and stated that the U.S. military has sent a team of experts »

Let us recall Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s disquisition on American foreign policy in which he explicated the text of Malcolm X in his Nation of Islam phase: “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” It was Wright’s post 9/11 sermon. Thus spake Obama’s pastor (video here): “What Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Muhammad was in fact true: America’s chickens are coming home to roost.” Wright expounded on »

The twisted mentality of the Obama administration is prominently on display in Jeffrey Goldberg’s summary of his conversations with senior officials posted here. Anonymously describing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as “chickenshit,” one senior official serves up a pure case of projection, and another senior administration official seconds him (or her). It is as if Obama himself had dismissed someone as “arrogant,” or Joe Biden disparaged anyone as “stupid,” or John »

In case you missed it, the Obama administration (a “senior administration official”) has gone on record calling Benjamin Netanyahu a “chickenshit.” Somehow, that seems like a poor–not to mention vulgar–turn of phrase. The Netanyahu family is not known for its “chickenshit” qualities. Let’s just say that in his youth, Benjamin did not belong to a “Choom Gang.” Mark Hemingway responds on Twitter: Sure, that chickenshit PM was IDF special forces, »

Doran Ben-Atar, a professor of history at Fordham University, is an outspoken opponent of calls by the American Studies Association (ASA) for a boycott of Israel’s academic institutions. And wisely so. The boycott is an affront to the free exchange of ideas that should be at the heart of the academic mission. The affront is so obvious that the boycott has failed to gain much traction, for now at least, »